PRESS

"Flawless Sabrina, a legendary godmother of American drag. William S. Burroughs was her lover; Andy Warhol, a supporter. Diane Arbus photographed her in Central Park looking gaunt and glorious, with her narrow body and bright bulb of hair. In the years when cross-dressing could get you arrested (and long before “Paris Is Burning”), she established a national circuit of beauty pageants for drag queens, traveling across America in the ’50s and ’60s. Jeffreys suspects that the term “flawless” followed her. Flawless Sabrina, now in her 70s, cautiously agrees. It was “tongue in cheek,” she says of her name. She was attracted “to the irony of it,” she adds. “This idea of a paragon of perfection. God knows I was anything but perfect.” -THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Between 1959 and 1969, queer icon Flawless Sabrina ran a national drag enterprise that held 46 shows a year. These contests attracted such participants as famed drag performer Divine, who first experimented with drag at one of Sabrina’s events. Experienced in her craft, Sabrina has been arrested over 100 times for the former felony of crossdressing..." - OUT

"Along with Diana Tourjee—a writer who is working on a book about Flawless—Drucker is raising funds to enable the cataloging and preservation of the masses of historically significant art, documents, and other artifacts that currently reside in the queen’s small New York apartment..." - SLATE

"Towards the end of her* X-rated 1968 documentary The Queen, Flawless Mother Sabrina takes the stage at New York City's Town Hall. Not-quite-thirty (but already America's doyenne of drag), she wears the gown, make-up, and breasts of a much older woman. The room is filthy with fame, both on stage and at the judging table: Andy Warhol, International Chrysis, Terry Southern, Jerry Lieber, Mario Montez, Crystal LaBeija..." -VICE

"Flawless Sabrina: I had known truth and he was a drug addict. Last I heard he was in prison somewhere in New Jersey. But he was very old at the time, so he could be dead. There was a truth. What was his name? Herman? Simon? Somin Truth? A very nice Jewish boy. His grandfather was a rabbi. I guess he was a kind of rabbi too. Truth is a kind of rabbi." - RECAPS MAGAZINE

"Sabrina says us kids, we’re suffragettes, fighting for rights in a culture that too often invokes in us the distrust of intuition. “It quickly comes under question, if a child is thoughtful. They realize everything they’re hearing is not right. ‘Don’t put the cat under water; it will drown.’ ‘Don’t masturbate; you’ll get hair on your palms.’ The cat’s dead, no hair. It’s not all true: some of it’s valid, some of it not, and the child is tasked to figure it out.” - DAZED

"Earlier this year, as part of the Whitney Biennial, I had my Tarot cards read by Flawless Sabrina. Flawless’s name was one I’d heard many times, from friends in the New York City LGBT community who know her as a fabulous friend and mentor. Over the years, I’d come to understand just how important she was: a pioneering drag queen and LGBTQ activist starting in the 1950s, when gender conformity was the sine qua non of American culture. I was extremely excited to have the chance to meet her in person." - HYPERALLERGIC

"Trans woman artist Zackary Drucker first encountered her grandma, Flawless Sabrina, in 2001. “I moved to New York City from Syracuse, and didn’t have enough money to get into Wigstock and photograph the performers, but I could stand outside of it and take pictures,” she tells me wryly. “And Flawless was performing, she had this like, Victorian garb on? With a wig that was like six feet up in the air. Of all the people I photographed, she was the only one who told me, ‘You’re on the wrong side of the camera kid’...” - HELIX